Train Yourself to Learn Like Einstein (Superintelligence)

when albert einstein died in 1955 his brain was removed within seven and a half hours of his death by local pathologist thomas harvey now harvey stood at einstein's brain to understand how he was able to think like a genius and absorb information like a sponge it was almost like einstein could read a book and remember everything and what thomas javi found when he was dissecting einstein's brain was fascinating so using many of the lessons learned from harvey examining and analyzing einstein's brain we can use those lessons to learn how we ourselves can think more like einstein so how we can absorb and retain huge amounts of information in a relatively short period of time just by changing the way we process information using the same strategy as the einstein did develop your brain's neuroplasticity so one of the main findings with thomas harvey's analysis of einstein's brain was that he had bigger regions of his brain dedicated to logic maths and the ability to understand visual information on a very deep level but what's more interesting is that those areas of his brain showed greater connectivity and stronger neural pathways connecting the different areas of his brain so what does this mean it means when you learn new information it's so important to connect that new information with information that you already know so a really simple kind of practical strategy for this is let's say before you read a chapter in a textbook you take out your notepad and you essentially do a brain dump and write everything that you already know about that topic onto your notepad so then when you do read the new chapter in the book you write your notes on the same paper that you did your brain dump on so that way you're visually combining what you already know with new information and this is so powerful because just like what thomas harvey found with einstein's brain you are increasing the neuroplasticity of your brain so your neural pathways between the different areas of your brain are increasing and strengthening so information gets transferred to different areas of your brain more efficiently so essentially you're able to think faster nurture and grow your brain einstein's brain was extremely structurally mature because he devoted his whole life developing and nurturing it so just like you would go to the gym to grow your muscles right we can do the same with our brain so different areas of the brain get bigger the more we use them right so more parts of einstein's brain was bigger partly because he was using them all because he was very intensely thinking about maths about physics for hours every day therefore those parts of the brain grew and interestingly thomas harvey found his part of the brain needed for writing novels actually slightly shrunk so in theory by practicing you can make different parts of your brain slightly larger and therefore think a little bit more like einstein one practical activity you can do is to train your ability to visualize and this is a useful skill the ability to imagine something and kind of rotate it and manipulate it with your mind it can be extremely helpful in all areas of your life particularly if you have goals and dreams and you envision and i mean you really envision what it will be like to achieve that dream these kind of exercises can significantly improve your spatial awareness and imagination also i found this pretty interesting if you are a very hard-working student and you've been studying hard for years you're hippocampus the area of the brain which plays a major role in learning and memory is probably significantly larger than someone who hasn't studied much at all so a university college london study in 2000 studied london taxi drivers when they were studying for the knowledge which is a rigorous test where the drivers have to spend years studying and memorizing 25 000 streets in london right and the researchers found that the taxi drivers that studied and passed the knowledge had significantly bigger hippocampuses than the average person and their hippocampuses grew while studying for the test allowing them to memorize more information in a shorter period of time so the next time you're studying and you think you're kind of completely wasting your time because when you graduate you're probably not going to use that information just remember that you're essentially working out or exercising your brain and so when you do graduate you'll be able to absorb information a lot faster than someone who doesn't study at all don't rely only on school and university it is commonly said that einstein achieved really poor grades at school however if you dig a bit deeper that does seem to be a bit of a myth so this is einstein's actual report card each subject is graded a number from one to six with one being the lowest grade and six being the highest grade so as you can see his grades are actually not bad at all he clearly excelled in algebra geometry and physics where he scored a six the highest grade however he didn't do so well in french where he just scored a three but overall this report card shows that he was a pretty decent student and one thing that becomes very apparent when looking at einstein's early schooling though was both his aversion for rote memorization like he really didn't like memorizing information based on repetition he found it incredibly boring and inefficient and i'd agree with him we now know that there are so many superior more efficient learning methods than rote memorization he once said i played hooky a lot and studied the masters of theoretical physics with a holy zeal at home so there are two components at play here number one he was self-studying right he wasn't necessarily relying on the formal education system but he was learning from home and teaching himself and secondly he was finding learning methods to learn that were far more effective for him than rote memorization and just using repetition to learn and i say this all the time to the students that i coach in my opinion the best way to learn is by doing not just memorizing so let me give you an example using this video sponsor if you can find interactive ways to learn such as using brilliance platform where you can solve interactive problems where you can learn through storytelling and guided problem solving and making lots of mistakes while playing that is how you learn so i've been using brilliant for more than a year now because it's a very natural way of learning where you let your curiosity lead your learning as opposed to the threat of an upcoming exam right so for example i completed the algorithm fundamentals course not too long ago and honestly the subject of algorithm fundamentals is quite a dry subject i probably wouldn't be able to read a textbook on it right but brilliant genuinely made the whole learning process extremely kind of interactive which made it fun to learn therefore i learned faster and the information actually stuck in my long-term memory and i think above everything else brilliant makes you want to learn as opposed to being in a position where you don't really want to therefore you're kind of forced to learn so if you're studying any subjects relating to science technology engineering or maths or even if you just want to kind of self-learn purely to become more knowledgeable i really do recommend you check brilliant out there are already millions of people using brilliant and you can join them for free at brilliant.org forward slash products elon the link is in the description below and if you click that link the first 200 listeners will receive 20 discount off their annual membership subscription increase your strategic downtime if you want to think more like a genius you need to relax there's a theory that all ideas are not new but combinations of old ideas right so often the best way to come up with an original idea is to think of two ideas and then combine them in a unique way to make something original this is one reason why strengthening your brain's neural pathways will help you to come up with even better ideas because you're able to bring two things together very quickly and very efficiently so albert einstein was a lifelong sailor who insisted that many of his best ideas came to him while he was floating around by himself and doing absolutely nothing and sometimes a bit of it strategic downtime can be a good thing it allows our brain and mind to rest and gives us time to reflect on the day and even gives us kind of some respite to come up with new ideas and science also backs this up so your defaults mode network is a part of your brain that is responsible for daydreaming forward planning and coming up with new ideas right but interestingly your defaults mode network only really kicks in when you're involved with very mundane tasks such as going for a walk outside or taking a shower it's why you might often find that your best ideas pop up when you're in the shower because although you're not actively thinking your default mode network is hard at work so einstein famously worked in a painting office and the idea was that he was just stamping away for eight hours a day but while he was doing this pretty mundane task he was coming up with all these interesting and unique ideas and steve jobs was the same he too was a daydreamer the time steve jobs was procrastinating and had his head in the clouds on possibilities was time well spent in letting his more impressive ideas come to the table make stress management a priority in 1922 einstein left a handwritten note in the imperial hotel in tokyo which read a calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant relentlessness so einstein was a pretty chill guy he knew that living in a constant state of stress would significantly hinder his creativity and his ability to come up with origin ideas because when you're stressed your brain is super focused on just one area so for example when you're in a fight-off flight situation and running away from a saber-toothed tiger you don't want to be focused on what you're going to have for dinner right so when you're stressed you become more kind of ultra focused but less creative right a really good practical example is if you start studying for your exams one day before the actual exam you're going to be quite stressed right you'll probably be super focused but you'll probably have very little creativity and you won't be able to absorb information into your long-term memory very efficiently however if you do this one thing and you just start studying for the exam let's say one month before the exam then you'll be far more relaxed you'll enjoy your studying more because you can take your time you can explore new ideas and just the overall experience and end results will be far better compared with if you're just rushing and stressed out the day before the exam meditation in 2011 a harvard study found that just eight weeks of mindfulness meditation can actually change the structure of the brain so participants were found to have increased thickness in the hippocampus which governs the learning and memory and in certain areas of the brain that play roles in the emotional regulation there are also decreases in brain cell volumes in the amygdala which is responsible for fear anxiety and stress another study found that mindfulness meditation improves attention and concentration so if you do struggle with procrastination and kind of just getting distracted when you're studying then i really do suggest you try mindfulness meditation even just for 10 minutes a day the study found that after just a couple of weeks of meditation training participants saw a significant improvement in focus and the ability to absorb and retain information in the long term in fact the increase in score was equivalent to 16 percentile points which is not exactly insignificant and since the strong focus of attention is one of the central aims of meditation it's not so surprising that meditation can help people's ability to focus but it is nice to have it confirmed by science and if intelligence was simply measured by a person's iq score einstein would not even be near the top he was estimated to have an iq of 160 and although that's pretty high it's not exactly genius levels high i think we're starting to realize that there is much more to being intelligent than just iq and einstein's intelligence was his imagination and his curiosity so if you were to look for a needle in a haystack what would you do if you found it probably give up right but einstein said that he would keep looking to see if there were any more needles and only stopped once he had looked through every strand of hay so training your brain to be able to absorb information like a sponge is a lot easier than you think you need to have the kind of initiative to learn outside of the formal education system just like einstein did and coincidentally that habit of learning outside the formal education system is easily the number one strategy that has had the biggest positive effect on my own life more than anything else so i've actually made a video explaining why that is named my number one productivity hack self-education you can click on the card on the screen to watch that alternatively i made another video called how to absorb everything you read speed learning it's one of the fastest growing videos on this channel you can click on the card on the screen to watch that and do check out this video's sponsor brilliant if you want to download information into your long-term memory fast you can't get much better than the brilliant platform i'll drop a link in the description for you to check out

Channel: Mike Dee

Views: 365,842

Keywords: student motivation, study motivation, study, study smart, study smarter, how to study, how to learn anything fast, learning, speed learning, how to memorise, how to learn things fast, remember what I read, remember what you read, how to learn faster, how to memorise faster, how to memorise fast, learn, learn faster, how to be a fast learner, how to learn fast, how to learn something fast, learning fast, einstein, learn like einstein, memory, memoryhacks, speed, brilliant, memorise

Id: HyC8RBN9HGs

Length: 13min 48sec (828 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 12 2022